Warner Bros. Discovery 2024 Upfronts
Ahead of the 2024/2025 Upfronts, Warner Bros. Discovery asked us to develop the strategy, messaging and visual design system for the event presentation and experiential touchpoints in Madison Square Garden to help them stand out amongst their peers. WBD's properties span a wide range of media — think Barbie, House of the Dragon, Euphoria, The White Lotus — that fans organically and enthusiastically embrace into their lives and culture more broadly.
I started the process with an audit of the visual language at the Upfronts from WBD and its competitors to understand common visual treatments and opportunities for the brand to evolve its visual expression.
The three directions push and pull different levers in their current design system:
1) Experimenting with new ways to render the WBD Shield
2) Exaggerating the framing device from their brand guidelines, playing with IP imagery and typography
3) Exploring ways to incorporate visual cues from social media to reference the conversations around WBD's shows
The final design system builds on the second design direction, Cultural Reverberations, which uses echoing frames and graphic devices to visualize the way that WBD's shows create waves in culture with far-reaching impact.
Once the visual toolkit was finalized and delivered to the client's in house design team, they took over production of the final event assets and brought them to life.
Additional images from the May 17 event forthcoming.
Agency: GSD&M
Creative Directors: Maria D'Amato + Adrien Bindi
WBD Creative Director: Richard Jennings
